A trillion dollars. It's a lot of money. In a year it could send 127 million college students to school, provide health insurance for 206 million people, or pay the salaries of seven million schoolteachers and seven million police officers. A trillion dollars could do...
Electrifying Africa–But at What Cost to Africans?
As children throughout the United States head back to school, it’s a good time to remember that schoolchildren throughout Africa often attend schools with no electricity. In areas that do have the utility, frequent power outages are a constant reminder of the need for...
The Disease of Short-Termism
It was famously described as the “end of history.” The collapse of Communism and the victory of liberalism near the end of the 20th century seemed to suggest that the great ideological conflicts of the previous eras had come to an end. A new and powerful consensus...
Peer-to-Peer Science: The Century-Long Challenge to Respond to Fukushima
More than two years after an earthquake and tsunami wreaked havoc on a Japanese power plant, the Fukushima nuclear disaster is one of the most serious threats to public health in the Asia-Pacific, and the worst case of nuclear contamination the world has ever seen....
Beyond Drug Trafficking: Toward Genuine Security in the Caribbean
Drug trafficking is, by many accounts, a major security challenge in the Caribbean region. Due in part to aggressive counter-drug trafficking operations in Central America, drug traffickers based in Mexico and Colombia increasingly use the Caribbean as an alternative...
Making Myanmar Work
On May 20, 2013, former general Thein Sein became the first Burmese president to visit the White House in almost 50 years. From a pariah state noted for human rights violations under its brutal military regime, Myanmar turned a corner in 2010-2011 with the release of...
Turkey: Uprising’s Currents Run Deep
For the time being, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan—with brutal police tactics that killed four people and injured more than 8,000—appears to have successfully crushed demonstrations aimed at blocking the demolition of Gezi Park in central Istanbul and...
Songdo Fallout: Is Green Finance a Red Herring?
From the 29th floor of Songdo, South Korea's jagged "G-Tower," one can glimpse the endless construction sites and vacant parks of an emerging “global business utopia,” to use the city’s adopted slogan. The newly built city, home to the UN's nascent Green Climate Fund...
The Roots of Social Rebellion? Social Movements.
The lesson from the streets of Brazil, Turkey, and the Arab world is to avoid underestimating half-baked social movements still in their infancy. With technological advancements and opportune conjunctures, the underdogs of yesterday can quickly turn into the makers of tomorrow. Not every nascent movement cascades into a full-blown revolution, but the pathfinders whose thoughts and actions carry forward to make history must get their due recognition.
The Oxygen Trade: Leaving Hondurans Gasping for Air
The carbon trade doesn’t just fail to address climate change. In countries like Honduras, it fuels a perverse incentive structure by funneling cash to notorious human rights abusers engaged in extractive industries.